Regulators shut 6 Ga. banks, 1 in New York state

[July 25, 2009]  WASHINGTON (AP) -- Regulators on Friday shut six banks in Georgia and a small bank in New York state, raising to 64 the number of federally insured banks to fail this year.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was appointed receiver of the banks: six bank subsidiaries of Security Bank Corp., based in Macon, Ga.; and Waterford Village Bank of Clarence, N.Y.

The six Security banks had total assets of $2.8 billion and deposits of $2.4 billion as of March 31. State Bank and Trust Co., based in Pinehurst, Ga., has agreed to assume all of the banks' deposits and $2.4 billion of the assets, the FDIC said. In addition, the FDIC and State Bank and Trust signed an agreement to share losses on around $1.7 billion of the six banks' assets.

Evans Bank, based in Angola, N.Y., will assume all the assets and deposits of Waterford Village Bank, said to have $61.4 million in assets and $58 million in deposits as of March 31. Its single office in Clarence will reopen Monday as a branch of Evans Bank. Also, the FDIC and Evans Bank agreed to share losses on about $56 million of the failed bank's assets.

With the latest closings, 16 Georgia banks have failed this year, more than in any other state. Most of the failures have involved banks in the Atlanta area, where the collapse of the real estate market brought economic dislocation.

The 64 bank failures nationwide this year compare with 25 last year and three in 2007.

The six Security banks had a total of 20 branches, which will reopen during normal business hours starting Saturday as branches of State Bank and Trust, the FDIC said. They are: Security Bank of Bibb County, based in Macon; Security Bank of Houston County, based in Perry; Security Bank of Jones County, based in Gray; Security Bank of Gwinnett County, based in Suwanee; Security Bank of North Metro, based in Woodstock; and Security Bank of North Fulton, based in Alpharetta.

The FDIC estimates that the cost to the deposit insurance fund from the failure of the six Security banks will be $807 million. For Waterford Village Bank, the cost to the fund is set at $5.6 million.

As the economy has soured - with unemployment rising, home prices tumbling and loan defaults soaring - bank failures have cascaded and sapped billions out of the deposit insurance fund. It now stands at its lowest level since 1993, $13 billion as of the first quarter.

While losses on home mortgages may be leveling off, delinquencies on commercial real estate loans remain a hot spot of potential trouble, FDIC officials say. If the recession deepens, defaults on the high-risk loans could spike. Many regional banks hold large numbers of them.

The Treasury Department has launched a program in which financial firms will buy as much as $40 billion worth of banks' soured, mortgage-linked investments. That amount is far below the potential $1 trillion in assets that the government originally hoped to take off the banks' books through the program and another that would have targeted bad loans.

The problem assets helped spark the financial crisis as they lost value and banks became unable to sell them. They have been weighing down banks' balance sheets - one reason the industry has had trouble providing the credit necessary to support an economic recovery.

The number of banks on the FDIC's list of problem institutions leaped to 305 in the first quarter - the highest number since 1994 during the savings and loan crisis - from 252 in the fourth quarter. The FDIC expects U.S. bank failures to cost the insurance fund around $70 billion through 2013.

The May closing of struggling Florida thrift BankUnited FSB is expected to cost the insurance fund $4.9 billion, the second-largest hit since the financial crisis began. The costliest was the July 2008 seizure of big California lender IndyMac Bank, on which the insurance fund is estimated to have lost $10.7 billion.

The largest U.S. bank failure ever also came last year: Seattle-based thrift Washington Mutual Inc. fell in September, with about $307 billion in assets. It was acquired by JPMorgan Chase & Co. for $1.9 billion in a deal brokered by the FDIC.

[Associated Press; By MARCY GORDON]

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